The use of various protective headgears is growing in today's society. Protective headgears are used in many recreational activities including, but not limited to, cycling, walking, running and participation in sports activities. These activities may be carried out at night or in low light conditions such that illumination would be advantageous. For example, strips of reflective material are well known for use in jogging clothing and shoes.
There have been attempts to develop illuminated headgears in industrial fields such as for mining and construction, for firefighting, and more recently for recreational use, including motorcycling.
Such headgears have been limited to use of large incandescent lights, electroluminescent light strips and more recently to use of small lighting elements such as light emitting diodes (LEDs).
Ippoliti et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,308, discloses a motorcycle helmet which makes use of LEDs to direct light between two thin shells of curvilinear profile such that characters, such as alphabet letters, are illuminated on the side of the helmet. The light sources are located in the bottom of the helmet to direct light upward and generally parallel to the thin shells, with light being reflected between the shells due to the curvilinear profile of the shells.
Chien, U.S. Pat. No. 5,871,271, shows a cycling helmet with hard shell outer layer and a protective shock absorbing layer in which LEDs in star shapes and other shapes are proposed to be mounted on circuit boards that fit within recesses in the helmet. In one embodiment, the LED's are placed inside of enclosures with opaque and translucent portions to form illuminated star shapes. These shapes are quite small and intended to impart a shape to an individual LED element.
Mantha et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,743,621, shows a helmet with illuminated translucent panels in the front and back of the helmet.
Many other prior patents show various types of illuminated headgears. Although each type of illumination process has their advantages and disadvantages, they are for the most part non-cost effective, difficult to produce and not very eye-appealing to the consumer. As a result these designs have not been widely seen in the recreational field.
Another technical problem in providing illuminated headgears, is retaining the strength of the helmet to impacts. Thus, the lighting assemblies should not result in a weakening of the structure of the headgear or a substantial lessening of the headgear's ability to distribute and absorb energy due to an impact.